


The Shape I Am

by Novocaine



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Gen, Kink Meme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-27
Updated: 2013-12-27
Packaged: 2018-01-06 09:38:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1105271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Novocaine/pseuds/Novocaine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It isn’t a unique name.  </i>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>  <i>It isn’t even an exotic one—there is no elegance in the sound or the spelling, no symmetry at all between the consonants and the vowels, no power, no beauty.  It is as simple a name as any.</i></p><p> </p><p>  <i>And yet.</i></p><p> </p><p>[Or,  the one in which Jean is in love with Marco's name.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Shape I Am

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the anon prompt ["Jean is not actually attracted to Marco, just Marco's name"](http://snkkink.dreamwidth.org/3666.html?thread=6098002#cmt6098002) over at the SnK Kink meme. I thought it was strange and decided to run with it.

_“Must a name mean something?" Alice asked doubtfully._

_“Of course it must," Humpty Dumpty said with a short laugh; "my name means the shape I am - and a good handsome shape it is, too. With a name like yours, you might be any shape, almost.”_

\--Lewis Carroll

 

*

 

It isn’t a unique name. 

It isn’t even an exotic one—there is no elegance in the sound or the spelling, no symmetry at all between the consonants and the vowels, no power, no beauty.  It is as simple a name as any.

And yet.

Jean finds himself saying it more often than necessary.  Whether he’s shouting it from the other side of the mess hall, calling it out to the treetops during training, whispering it when he and the other recruits sit up late at night to make promises and vows that fate would never allow them to keep, he always finds a reason to say it.

“Marco.”

It rolls off his tongue in a way none of the other names do, in a way none of the other names _could_.  And it doesn’t make any sense to him, how a name could do this to him, because it’s a goddamned _name_ and not even a great one at that.  The insanity of it doesn’t stop him from saying it, doesn’t stop him from noting the shape his mouth takes just before he says; “Marco,” and sometimes he says the boys last name too, but even that isn’t the same, the flavor is wrong, the pitch is off. 

He says it more times than he needs to and if anyone ever notices it, they’re polite enough to ignore it or chalk it up to just another one of his insufferable habits, just another one of the strange quirks that makes Jean the little bastard he is; it’s easier to think he does it out of spite and not out of some twisted, uncharted form of desire.  He looks at Marco and he doesn’t want to fuck him, not at all, but he wishes he did, because then he’d have a chance to say the name in any number of ways, in any number of tones—breathless on his back, panting on all fours, whimpering on his knees.  Or maybe the other way around; maybe he’d be the one on top of Marco ( _Marco_ , _Marco_ ), breath hot and harsh, and the name falling from his tongue over and over and over.

“Marco.”

But he doesn’t want that.  Jean doesn’t want _him_.

One day he stared into the mirror and said Marco’s name just to watch his lips and tongue wrap around the syllables.  Sometimes he snaps his mouth shut, runs his tongue along the back of his teeth and holds onto the name for as long as he can, before anticipation moves to sensation and he’s calling out for a boy he doesn’t want, the one with a name he can’t stop longing to say.

He takes a sheet a paper and writes the letters in careful, exaggerated script before he crumples it and stuffs it into his mouth.  He eats Marco’s name that night and if he still dreams about the taste of it, he never tells anyone.

“Marco.”

The funeral pyre is ablaze, the night alive with the crackling of flesh and bone and sinew.  Brave men and cowards lumped together, melting, scorched, from skin to ash.  Jean can’t tell who is who.  He can’t tell which one might have been Marco, which fragments of bone might have belonged to the boy with the name.  He will remember this night with a bitterness that will fuel him on the battlefield.  The memory of a half devoured body (forgotten and stinking, rotting in the aftermath beneath three days of gritty sunlight, lips shriveled into a monstrous grin) will poison his dreams loudly.  Marco’s body his ruined.  His memory is tainted.  His legacy flawed.

But not his name.

(And if anyone ever catches Jean whispering a dead boys name into the mirror, they are polite enough to say nothing at all.)


End file.
